Under the current law there is a default retirement age of 65; this means that once you turn 65 your employer can retire you. Often a person turning 65 now is not ready to retire or does not have enough pension or savings to want to retire. The Government is considering abolishing or raising the retirement age to help deal with the costs of an ageing population.
The Coalition Government is planning to raise the state pension age for men to 66 from 2016 – this is nearly 10 years earlier than the last Labour Government was planning.
As the country grapples with ever-increasing life expectancy, ministers are to also raise the possibility of extending the pension age to 70.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said the new policies were intended to “reinvigorate retirement”.
He said: “Now is absolutely the right time to live up to our responsibility to reform our outdated pension system and to take action where the previous government failed to do so.”
Millions of workers who are not saving for retirement face being enrolled in company schemes unless they opt out under the plans. Just over a third of people are thought to be currently saving into a private pension.
Michelle Mitchell, Age UK’s Charity Director, said: “The coalition must not make any rash decisions about the future of our pensions system. Before rushing through any increase to state pension age, the government must first reduce the health inequalities between rich and poor, and create a much fairer job market for older people. Failure to do so will force millions of older people, many of them poorer and with lower life expectancies, to work for longer or face another year trapped in unemployed limbo.
“Any review into bringing forward the state pension age increase must take into account the full impact on these workers. Clearly there are huge challenges ahead for the new government but now is the time to renew the fight against pensioner poverty and commit to eradicating it once and for all.”
I would comment that we are still seeing ageism in recruitment and unless this changes there will be a lot of people willing to work but unable to get gainful employment. The UK always seems to have had a problem with valuing experience. Often when there are redundancies the older workers are released in favour of keeping lower paid less experienced workers. I would want to see solid progress in the reduction of unemployed people who are over 50. The current Job Centre Plus does little to help people with senior management skills or those that were well paid.
If people want to start up a new business I found that there was no support whatsoever from a financial point of view, the Job Centre was all about finding a job not helping while you set up in business.
By Mike Frizzell Everycare (Central Hants) Ltd, www.everycarehants.co.uk